dextera domini
by hotmilkytea
Summary: Donnie is used to bearing weight.


because frankly watching the same dude die four times has to mess a guy up a little.

also splinter was not a great parent.

tmnt = viacom

* * *

 **dextera domini**

* * *

 _My father is dead_ , Donnie thinks, testing the weight of the words on his heart, on his soul, on his shoulders. They hang, tugging a little, but Donnie is so used to being overburdened that he figures he can carry a little more.

Upstairs, the pipes rattle as Raph starts to change the water in Leo's bath.

 _My father is dead, and my brother is dying._

He scowls to himself, once, gauging.

 _It was my fault._

He closes his eyes. Swallows down the scream. Regains his balance as he starts to sway, and plants his feet, locks his knees.

It's manageable.

He gets back to work.

* * *

Donnie's father comes to them in the forest, gives them pearls of wisdom before departing again to places unknown.

Donnie wonders if his father realises that his brain is part of his body, and it was physics, not strength, that saw him through.

* * *

Donnie finds his father, feeble-minded but alive, and relief almost chokes him.

He wonders if things will get better, this time.

* * *

The second time Donnie's father dies, it comes with a promise: _You can fix this._

And they do; through space, through war, through time itself.

But it takes watching his brother die again to do it. It takes killing to do it. It takes a suicide to do it.

Donnie wishes the Professor had let him help. Said something. _Anything_. But Donnie goes back into his lab, and sees Metalhead, sees Timothy, sees all the lives he's got in stasis, waiting for him, and he hopes that somehow, the Professor found peace at the end.

It's still another life in return for his own.

It's still another weight on his back, heavy and numb.

* * *

Donnie counts the number of deaths he's seen in his life.

Then he counts the number of deaths he cares about.

The number is very small.

* * *

Donnie watches his father fall to his death.

Donnie and his brother find him in the grave of one of their enemies; ill, and hurt, but warm and alive.

"I have _never been happier_ to see such smiling faces!" his father says, nuzzling close, and Donnie hoards those words, wraps them in joy to savour later, but when he re-examines them later, they don't bring him the joy he had hoped for.

They don't bring him much of anything.

* * *

Donnie watches his father die again, weeks later, and this time, there is no spaceship, nor spirit in the woods. There is no dark ravine hiding secret hopes.

There is only the seep of blood onto his knees and shoulders; the scent of damp and iron; and another weight.

* * *

The tree at the farmhouse is nothing like the tree at home.

But it's big, and shady, and the wind blows the leaves in a way that reminds Donnie of the rasp of wool and tail on concrete.

Donnie is nowhere near it.

The headstone is from a rock they found near the woods, the rock hard enough to make a headstone, soft enough to slowly wear away over the years and hide any marks that need hiding. But Donnie is an engineer, a mechanic that works with scraps, and the only truly beautiful things he's ever made have either been destroyed or rejected.

He's not a sculptor. He never has been.

But still the responsibility falls to him.

It has to be abstract, and Donnie realises that it's not just because of his lack of skill; he doesn't know how this effigy of his father should look at them. The loving father of Donnie's youth, the stern sensei of his adolescence, or something in-between?

"Hey," April says, stepping up behind him. He can smell coffee on the air. "How's it going?"

Donnie forces a small laugh, holding up a tablet to a WikiHow on rock sculpture. "Sometimes I think we got the wrong names. The _real_ Donatello would've had this done in an hour."

"Maybe not an _hour_." April steps a little closer. "How are you holding up?"

Donnie shrugs. Unbidden, a nasty little comment about how he's done this three times already rises, and he forces it back down, and tries to content himself to saying nothing. "How's Mikey?" he asks instead.

"Sad," April replies, the shrug evident in her voice. "I think we all are."

There's an edge there that Donnie doesn't like. _We all are._ "Yeah," he agrees, chipping away another piece of rock.

"It's okay, you know," April says, coaxingly; ever the psychologist's daughter, who managed all of her feelings all by herself right up until they got warped into murder. "To be sad. To talk about it."

Donnie can't be melodramatic — _I'm always sad_ — and he can't lie to _April_ , of all people. And he can't be cruel, either. Not to April. But then April shifts a little closer to him again, her silence considerate and waiting, waiting for Donnie to finally just let all of his grief go. And maybe there's a little bit of quid-pro-quo in that — Donnie was, has been, and always will be there for April in her darkest moments.

But.

"I don't know if you'll like what I have to say," he confesses, setting his tools in his lap. "Master Splinter— raised us," he says, trying to sound rational, gathered. It's easier than he thought. "He looked after us, took care of us, taught us how to fight— shouldn't I feel something?"

April says nothing, and he's not sure if he's grateful, or if he feels just a little bit more damned.

April watched him murder a version of her mother. April watched him and his brothers break her father. April watched him behind a monster's eyes and tore him apart.

April has lost three parents to Donnie's one.

"I don't feel _anything_ ," Donnie says, his brows creasing together. He stares at his hands, pale and dusty from the granite. He wonders if Splinter ever noticed; the mornings he couldn't hold his bo properly after the big lair rewiring project after the last invasion; the extra bandages when the boiler rusted through; the aches when he woke up, stiff and cold, creeping out of his lab at four in the morning, and trying not to care that someone had put a blanket over Mikey, but not him.

But equally, he can remember the joy in his father's eyes that night in the ravine; the rare affection; the thankful hand on his shoulder as they eased Splinter into his room. He can remember the earlier days, before the war; when Splinter would quietly hand him a piece of hardware from the world above; when they would sit in the den and do the crossword together; when neither of them could sleep, and they would sit in the kitchen drawing kanji until Donnie finally felt tired, and Splinter tucked him in again.

He can remember the very last time Splinter was kind to him, for _him_.

He can remember each and every one of his father's deaths.

"Donnie," April says quietly. She reaches out, and touches his shoulder, and he waits. April's hands are small and cold and light and strong, just like Splinter's, and he waits for the weight to finally be too much, and for it to break him.

But there's nothing.

Just a job that needs to be finished.

"Could you please pass me the sandpaper?" he asks, and is proud of himself for how even his voice is.

* * *

Their father's spirit comes back one last time.

He does not reveal himself to anybody but his most favoured son.

* * *

When Donnie's father finally moves on, it's on a rooftop at sundown.

He tells his family that he loves them, but he only has eyes for his son and his daughter.

Later, when they go home, the four brothers congregate in front of the family shrine. They light incense and pray together for their father's soul to rest with his beloved wife. Then, slowly, they move back to restart their lives the way they had tried since the third time their father died.

Donnie lingers.

"Donnie?" Leo asks.

Donnie thinks that maybe Leo is pointedly waiting for privacy; a moment of meditation before he officially takes on the mantle crafted for him. "In a minute," Donnie says, not looking away from the altar.

Leo stands next to him. He leans slightly to one side, making him shorter than he should be; his bad leg acting up again, after the latest round of battles. Something distant in Donnie tugs, but he's too exhausted to give it the attention he should.

Instead, he considers his brother, and himself, and their father.

Considers the times Leo must have sought their father here for counsel and wisdom, and got it. The times Donnie tried, but did not.

He wonders if he says anything here, would his father hear it?

And then, just as importantly, if he says anything here, would his father _listen_ now, as he had never in the past?

"I tried," he says instead, because he _did_.

Leo clasps his shoulder. "I know, Don," he replies, with a gentle squeeze that proves that he doesn't. Leo's hands are different from Splinter's; thicker, clumsier, _heavier_. Leo's voice is rougher, younger, _damaged_.

Another weight.

Donnie almost doesn't notice it anymore.


End file.
